Community Corner

Class of '76 Gives Check To Brandon High School Alumni at The Clubhouse

At the The Clubhouse Sports Cafe in Brandon, members of the Class of '76 present a check to the Brandon High School Alumni Association for its scholarship program. The numbers add up to an interesting tidbit of Brandon history.

When Karen Rodriguez heard that the Class of ’76 had collected extra money at its 35th reunion this summer, and that the money was being donated to the Brandon High School Alumni Association, she figured as president of the group she’d be collecting somewhere in the neighborhood of $200.

To her surpisee, at The Clubhouse Sports Cafe in Brandon on Sept. 19, on behalf of the alumni association, Rodriguez accepted a check in the amount of $1,404.44.

“I thought maybe, at best, the most we’d get is $200,” Rodriguez said.

Find out what's happening in Brandonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

That larger amount is a “godsend,” she said, “because we’ve been struggling for the past three years.”

The “struggle” involved the effort to raise the $2,000 necessary to award the annual scholarship to a graduating Brandon High senior.

Find out what's happening in Brandonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“We give $2,000, but we only raised enough to give $750 the past two years,” Rodriguez said.

Now, this year, thanks to the Class of ’76, the alumni association is looking to give possibly two, $750 scholarships.

That’s where a discussion of the numbers came into play:

The alumni association had expected $200, the amount raised was $1,400 and change.

Look carefully: $200, $1,400; take out three digits, put the others together, and you get 2014, the year Brandon High celebrates its 100th anniversary.

To which Mark Vargo, ’76, simply said that’s as it should be, “The universe is aligning!”

Vargo noted, too, that the Class of '76 had the funds to donate following its weekend reunion in August.

"We had some extra money and we had some raffles," Vargo said. "Some of it is from a DVD I made."

That DVD, Vargo added, included scanned pictures of the almost 900 class members, leading with the members of the class who have died. It is in the memory of those classmates, Vargo said, that the donation to the alumni association has been made.

"When we started planning all this, I said I wanted to give any money we had left over in memory of all our deceased classmates," Vargo said.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here